A new social network called Ello, which is being described as anti-Facebook due to its strong position on privacy and advertising is fast gaining and audience online.

"Ello doesn't sell ads. Nor do we sell data about you to third parties. We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce, and manipulate, but a place to connect, create, and celebrate life. You are not a product," said the company, as reported by AFP News.
Ello's policy rests on the idea that selling personal data, "is both creepy and unethical", and on most sites, "under the guise of offering a 'free' service, users pay a high price in intrusive advertising and lack of privacy."

Behind the scenes
The network based in Vermont, US, was launched by a group of artists and programmers.
The leading man behind the launch was Paul Budnitz who is known for designing bicycles and robots. According to Budnitz, the concept behind Ello was to design a, "simple, beautiful and ad-free" network.


Additionally, because Budnitz and his team have strong design and art backgrounds, they wanted the site to look good. "I wanted something really clean and very different," he said. "I also wanted to deal with clutter." Berger added that Ello was also intended as a shared art space, and that's apparent almost immediately. It has a minimalist interface, with plenty of white space and a wide layout that really lets art and photos take center stage. And for all you GIF-lovers out there, Ello supports those animated images out of the gate.

 
As U.S. military leaders outlined their strategy before Congress to fight Islamic State militants on the battlefield, the National Security Agency chief said on Tuesday he was watching the media-savvy group's cyber capabilities.Asked whether the Sunni Muslim group was planning cyber attacks on U.S. interests, Admiral Mike Rogers said he could not discuss specifics of the organization's technical capabilities.

"We need to assume that there will be a cyber dimension increasingly in almost any scenario that we're dealing with," Rogers said at a cybersecurity conference in Washington. Islamic State, which controls large swaths of Iraq and Syria, has posted carefully choreographed beheading videos online, trumpeted its violent acts on Twitter and used social media to recruit foreign Islamists to the fight.
"Its public messaging and social media is as slick and as effective as any I've ever seen from a terrorist organization," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York last week.
Cybersecurity expert James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said he did not think Islamic State posed any immediate cyber threat to American interests. While there may be no imminent or specific cyber threat from Islamic State, there is a wide-ranging intent to damage the West, a congressional aide said. Different jihadist groups have talked about launching cyber attacks and it may be just a matter of time before they find someone capable of doing it, the aide said on condition of anonymity.



Rogers, speaking generally on how cybersecurity threats are proliferating across all aspects of American life, said: "There is nothing but increased activity out there." As Pentagon officials told Congress on Tuesday they were preparing for a longer-term campaign against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, Rogers said cyber defense was a long-haul effort.


The U.S. Cyber Command he leads hopes to have 6,200 cyber employees by 2016 to detect and deflect such threats, and Rogers urged greater cooperation on cybersecurity between government, business and industry. "There are a lot of groups out there - individuals, nation-states - who feel that this is an area worth investing in, because it achieves positive outcomes for them if they can penetrate systems," Rogers said at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit.

Facebook is planning to introduce self-destructing posts that'll vanish after a certain time.
The online social networking service is reportedly testing a new feature that will see Facebook posts vanish after a stipulated period of time. All you’ll need to do is set the “choose expiration” time for the post and it’ll disappear when the length of time you set is up. The social networking site is testing a new feature that will let you schedule a post for deletion. All you have to do is set the length of time, and the post will go poof when you want it to.

“We’re running a small pilot of a feature on Facebook for iOS that lets people schedule deletion of their posts in advance,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Huffington Post on Wednesday. Though it's unclear precisely when Facebook started the test, a few people have reported seeing the following option to "Choose Expiration" on their Facebook posts.


Whatever the reason, it's nice that Facebook is attempting to make little improvements. Most recently, Facebook tested a feature that let users search through their friends' old posts.

Facebook has tried some things with self-destruction before. This past June, it accidentally released a Snapchat clone called Slingshot before it meant to. So far, Slingshot hasn't had much mainstream success. Originally, what differentiated Slingshot from Snapchat was that when someone sent you a photo, you'd have to send one back to them in order to open the incoming image. But Facebook removed that feature last week, and now Slingshot is essentially just Snapchat with a different name. And Slingshot has a huge flaw: It doesn't warn you when someone takes a screenshot of your photo.

Twitter is officially announcing that Buy button today — in a blog post, the company says it will be visible to “a small percentage of U.S. users (that will grow over time).” As a result, users will actually be able to make purchases directly within tweets. If you see something you want, you hit “buy”, bring up a little information, enter your payment and shipping information while still Twitter (it’s encrypted and stored for future purchases), and complete the transaction “in just a few taps.”
And even though the test is starting out on mobile, a company spokesperson said it will be moving onto desktop soon as well.

Twitter says it’s partnering with a number of companies to make the Buy Now button happen, starting social shopping company Fancy, digital content seller Gumroad, fan commerce company Musictoday, and payments company Stripe. The initial sellers include musicians (Demi Lovato, Eminem, Pharrell), nonprofits (Donors Choose, Glide, RED), and retailers (Burberry, The Home Depot).

Lavingia added that creating a purchase experience that’s “really simple and really fast has always been super important for us” and that he hopes that similar experiences will “over time become the norm because of things like Twitter.”

For its part, Twitter describes this as “an early step in our building functionality into Twitter to make shopping from mobile devices convenient and easy, hopefully even fun,” so you can probably expect its commerce initiatives to expand. (We’ve also heard that the company was working on something closer to a marketplace separate from the main river of content.)

This seems like a pretty natural avenue for expansion — not only is it a potential source of revenue on its own, but if Twitter successfully drives sales, that could encourage businesses to become more active on the service and to advertise more.

Although Facebook recently passed the 500 million download mark with their semi-detached Messenger app, it looks like they're not content to rest on their laurels. After adding full Android Wear support and video uploads to the app, Facebook's latest adjustment gives users the power to edit photos before sending them to chat contacts. Well, sort of - it's the kind of editing you can do with a Polaroid photo and a Sharpie marker.

While in a chat, tap the photo icon in the bottom control row. You'll see the now-standard horizontal photo reel. Slide left or right to find the one you want, then select either the "Aa" (text) or pen icon. You can doodle or type to your heart's content, which should be very handy for elaborating on complex driving directions. Or drawing genitals on the heads of your friends when they've been caught in a compromising position. You know, important stuff. When you're done, switch down to the bottom bar again and tap the arrow icon to upload the photo.

Strangely, there doesn't seem to be any way to annotate a photo taken with Facebook Messenger's built-in "selfie cam," since those photos are sent to your contact immediately. But if you take a photo with your phone or tablet's default camera, it should show up in Facebook Messenger's photo roll quickly.

On Thursday, Facebook released a new tool to help you understand and control your privacy settings on the site.  First announced back in April, the Privacy Checkup tool lets you see and adjust who can view your data, as well as which apps can access it. It is navigated, curiously, with the help of a nameless blue dinosaur –– let’s call him Clippyosaurus –– who pops up now and then and reminds you to review your privacy settings to “make sure they’re set up the way you want.”


Per the company’s blog post:
“Today, we’re starting to roll out Privacy Checkup, which helps you review and control who you’re sharing with. The Privacy Checkup tool attempts to both simplify the process of changing your sharing settings and demystify whom you’re sharing with. The tool isn’t a cure-all. While it might help you better understand what you’re sharing and with whom, for example, it doesn’t change the fact that Facebook farms out your detailed personal data to advertisers for profit by default.


When you access your privacy settings via the lock symbol in the upper-right corner of Facebook’s navigation bar, your (Mac-using?) dinosaur friend will appear and be like, “Hey, privacy, blah blah blah.”

After you click Privacy Checkup, a box will pop up on your screen. Via this tool, you can monitor Your Posts, Your Apps, and Your Profile.

The second is a survey of which apps are connected to your Facebook. I’ll admit it’s nice to have quick access to this, as I often try out an app once or twice and then forget about it. With this tool, I can remove its access to my data with one click. You can also adjust who sees your activity on the app. Finally, you’re shown all the basic personal info on your profile and given the choice to adjust what it says and who sees it.

Internet is free and a sign of empowerment for many youth. But the big question: are all our movement online is being monitored? As an online enthusiasts if your answer is in positive then you are wrong. All your online activities are being monitored and collected.

This fact could be established after a reported launched by the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) titled India’s Surveillance State at the Internet Governance Forum, currently underway in Istanbul.
Those who have a look at this report confirmed that the state has put in number of Lawful Interception and Monitoring systems to keep an eye on people who spend time online.

And monitoring such people is easy. Moreover, as internet penetration increases, surveillance too will increase. R.S. Sharma, secretary, Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeiTY), Government of India, said: “Indians without access to internet form 25% of the people in the world left out of the digital world. So it was the priority of GoI to attend sessions where we could pick up ideas on how to bridge this gap. By December 2016 we aim to bring broadband connectivity to all panchayats.”

The report also throws light to the system adopted by the government to spy on its online citizens. It is understood that an unknown number of Lawful Interception and Monitoring (LIM) systems are installed in India’s communication networks, helping officials to not only collect users’ communications data and meta-data but also to analyse them.

Bloomberg reported Thursday that the company is testing a new option for the Facebook app that will allow people to search through their friends' posts. People will also be able to comb through old posts on pages they "like." So if you posted a ridiculous ode to your ex in 2009, this feature would make it a lot easier for your friends to dig it up. All they'd have to do is search for it.

"We’re testing an improvement to search on mobile," Facebook told The Huffington Post in an email. "In this test you can use keywords to search for posts you’re in the audience for on Facebook.” The tool is only available to some people for now, Bloomberg reported.
So essentially, if you want to see old posts related to your friend Sarah Jones's wedding, you would search for "Sarah Jones wedding."

Facebook monetise its offerings in emerging economies better, the social networking company, launched a tool to help advertisers target their campaigns based on the type of network connection they usually use to access the internet - 2G, 3G or 4G. The company said this was a global feature but would be key in countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and India where devices and bandwidth connections are often the lowest common denominator.


Facebook said bandwidth targeting was available to advertisers around the world via the Ad Create tool, Power Editor and the application programming interface from Thursday. It also said the feature had been built "with privacy in mind" and all data will be anonymous. "Audiences for mobile network targeting are developed by aggregating groups of people based on primary connection-type."

The announcement comes on the heels of Facebook committing in July that it would build customised experiences for people in high-growth countries. It had earlier launched a "click to missed call" feature for India in line with a "cultural" behavioural trend here.

The service allows a user to click a button that calls a brand advertiser, immediately disconnects and then receives a return call which delivers pre-recorded audio messages be it about sponsored cricket scores, information about shopping discounts etc.  Facebook's chief operating officer Sheyrl Sandberg visited India last month and also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi among other key stakeholders including advertisers.

The company said in a blog post that it already offers the option to reach people based on the type of device they use (smart phones, feature phones and tablets), as well as device model and operating system. "However, advertisers also told us that having the ability to segment based on network connection type would help them create better ad experiences." Targeting by mobile network type helps advertisers choose creative that will run smoothly on any given device and connection speed, it added.

The era of clickbait may be future to an end. Facebook says it's winning steps to save the increased headlines-about the implausible, surprising, overly-sentimental intelligence that will rejuvenate your belief in humanity and lead you literally crying-out of your Info Give.

The problem with these kinds of stories is that they work-they incline to displace a lot of clicks and thusly appear prominently in users' Broadcast Feeds-but they rarely speak important substance to lively up to the head in the eldest gauge, according to a diary author typewritten by Facebook explore mortal Khalid El-Arini and fluid doc Writer Dynasty. The party networking giant's own inspect says that 80% of users would promote to bed sufficiency accumulation to resolve whether they'd record an article before clicking through.

So to key and tracheophyte out clickbait (and to stronghold users upcoming rearward to the place), Facebook is evaluating Intelligence Consume substance on two criteria. The rank is metropolis time-if users are all clicking on a instruction and forthwith regressive aft to Facebook, the story probably didn't utter on the expectation of its headline. The indorse measure is engagement-if Facebook users are all clicking on a attach without commenting, sharing or liking it, the account probably is low on entity.

The position present also range articles that are mutual as course, kinda than as photos with with URLS tucked into a caption-a method of distribution that lets users and publications to haul clicks with lower aggregation and potentially dishonest photos that aren't actually in the taradiddle.

Twitter has introduced a new anti-spam system called BotMaker and says that it is responsible for a 40 percent reduction in its key spam metrics. The BotMaker anti-spam system was created with one low-latency sub-system (Scarecrow) which checks in real time the content posted on the site and decides whether the content should be approved or not. The second computationally-intense and learning sub-system (Sniper) checking in ‘near real time’ the user and content event logs that make it past the Scarecrow.

The BotMaker is constantly fed information by Scarecrow and Sniper, and issues commands to approve, deny or challenge posts. The micro-blogging site also runs periodic jobs on all the data compiled by the BotMaker system for routine checks to specific exercises by the engineering department.

Twitter’s Raghav Jeyaraman stated in an official blog post the challenges faced by the team in creating BotMaker. He stated that due to Twitter’s wide-ranging developer APIs, meant for third-parties to interact with the platform, spammers “know (almost) everything” about how the micro-blogging network functions, which makes it difficult to create an anti-spam system.

Jeyaraman wrote, “These operating conditions are a stark contrast to the constraints placed upon more traditional systems, like email, where data is private and adding latency of tens of seconds goes unnoticed. So, to fight spam on Twitter, we built BotMaker, a system that we designed and implemented from the ground up that forms a solid foundation for our principled defense against unsolicited content,” he said. “The system handles billions of events every day in production, and we have seen a 40 percent reduction in key spam metrics since launching BotMaker.”

A recent report by Twitter revealed that nearly 23 million of active users on the site are ‘Bots’. However, the company says that these accounts are not necessarily spam accounts, which make up less than 5% of total MAUs. These spam accounts affect advertisers who are interested in reaching potential customers through the micro blogging site.

Twitter has announced "promoted recording ads" that would appropriate advertisers to collection videos on the micro-blogging position and alter bar the "get and effectiveness" of that proportionality.

Regan extra that Twitter module pay a "outgo per view" represent for advertisers: "This means advertisers only get effervescent when a person starts playacting the recording," he said.

"Additionally, advertisers using Promoted Video screw hit to husky video analytics," specified as how some fill catch the total video, he said.

According to research unfaltering eMarketer, Peep accounted for nearly 0.5 per coin of global digital ad revenues in 2013. The interrogation other that this present gain more to 0.8 per coin in 2014. Twirp revealed conclusion month that its identify of monthly nimble users has reached 271 meg, up nearly 24 per centime from an assemblage ago. In India there has seen a ontogeny of 37% in gregarious networking during 2013 and faculty soul solon than 80 cardinal Facebook and Twitter users by the end of 2014. The micro blogging place revealed that its revenue has magnified to $312.2 million due to amount in ambulatory ads, which are 81% of count advertizing sales.

The color change scam tricks users into downloading malware via a site that claims to let users change the colors of their Facebook profile. The latest iteration of the scam has already affected more than 10,000 people around the world, according to Cheetah Mobile, a Chinese Internet company that highlighted the most recent appearance of the scam in its blog.

The malware begins by advertising an app that tells Facebook users they can change the color theme of their profile. Download the app and you're directed to a malicious phishing site, according to Cheetah Mobile's security researchers.

The website targets users in two ways. First it steals the users' Facebook Access Tokens by asking them to view a color changer tutorial video. Temporary access to the tokens allows hackers to connect to the user’s Facebook friends. If a user doesn’t view this video, the site then tries to get them to download the malicious application. If a user is on a PC, the site leads them to download a pornographic video player. If the user is on an Android device, the site issues a warning saying the device has been infected and advises users to download a suggested app.

The problem, according to Cheetah Mobile, stems from "a vulnerability that lives in Facebook’s app page itself, allowing hackers to implant viruses and malicious code into Facebook-based applications that directs users to phishing sites." Anyone who has already fallen victim to the scam should uninstall the app immediately (this can be done from the "app" menu in your Facebook settings) and change their Facebook password.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Mashable that some users began to notice the change Wednesday — but that it is not yet affecting all of Facebook's mobile users.

The change will only affect users of the iPhone and Android app; messages will remain in the iPad and Windows Phone app. It's not clearly exactly how long it will take for all of Messenger's holdouts to see the change, but the spokesperson said it will continue to roll out over the coming weeks. Although the main Facebook app has been prompting users to download Messenger since April, when the company announced it would be making the switch, users could still access messages without downloading Messenger until now.

Facebook has been slowly ramping up to this change since the spring, when Facebook first announced it would be requiring mobile users to download both apps. Last week, Messenger holdouts received an email alerting them their messages would be moved over to the Messenger app in the very near future. Though some users remain unhappy about the move, Facebook has maintained switching to Messenger will benefit all users as messaging with Messenger is faster and more reliable. The app, which first launched in 2011, already has more than 200 million monthly users, the company reports.

If you have an eye for detail, did you notice this subtle difference on Facebook?

The notification icon at the top of the desktop version of the service has a different world map depending on where you log in from, as the eagle eyes at Tech In Asia spotted. The dual icons don’t appear to be new, they’ve been visible to some since at least November last year, but we suspect few people are aware.

Here’s what I get when I access Facebook from the US and countries in Latin America via a VPN:
And this is the icon for countries in the Eastern hemisphere:It’s the small things in life that can make a difference, and this is a nice way to acknowledge that Facebook is a global service, not just from the US.

Between January 1 and June 30, 2014 Twitter didn’t withhold any tweets from India, the company revealed in its latest Transparency Report. In this period the microbogging site didn’t receive any court ordered content removal requests. However, there were 5 content removal requests from various government agencies, police and others that specified 9 user accounts. It’s worth noting that in the second half of 2013 (between July and Demcember) Twitter had received 2 court ordered removal requests, 6 removal requests from government or police authorities that specified 54 accounts, and Twitter had withheld 13 tweets.

User information requests: Twitter received 16 government requests for account information from India that specified 44 user accounts, and complied with 13% of these requests between January-June 2014. In the second half of 2013 a total of 19 information requests for 27 accounts were made to Twitter. In 32% of the cases Twitter provided the requested information.
In totality Twitter received 2058 information requests for 3131 accounts and provided some information in 52% of the cases. The maximum requests originated from United States (1257), followed by Japan (192) and Saudi Arabia (189).

Removal requests: A total of 88 court ordered removal requests were received by Twitter, 344 removal requests from government agencies, police, etc. In this period Twitter withheld 251 tweets. Surprisingly, the maximum court ordered removal requests and removal request from other agencies originated from Turkey, 65 and 121 respectively.Copyright notices: There was a 38% increase in the number of copyright-based takedown notices in January-June 2014 period. Twitter received a total of 9199 takedown notices, and in 76% of the cases removed some material. Over 9000 accounts were affected by this, 30,870 tweets and 15,088 media files were withheld. There was also an 80% increase in counter notices – 10 between July-December 2013 to 18 between January-December 2014.

India stats on a decline
In comparison to the second half of 2013, Twitter received lower number of user information requests and content removal requests in the first half of 2014. It’s surprising because during this period a fiercely contested Lok Sabha election was held in the country, which was debated and analysed extensively on Twitter.

Twitter’s iOS and Android mobile apps began to embed tweets that have been linked in a tweet last month, and now the feature (which prompts us to make Inception-related jokes) has rolled out to Twitter.com. Embedding tweets is easy to do, just write your message and then include a link to the tweet that you wish to embed. There’s no feature that automates the process at this point.

The move smartens up how these tweets appear in your timeline, and allows you to get the gist of a linked tweet immediately without having to click through to find out. Any links inside the embed are not immediately clickable unless you open the nested tweet. The feature also gives Twitter users more space to comment on articles, in a similar fashion to the way that Weibo in China lets its users ‘forward’ messages while adding comment.

The feature doesn’t appear to be switched on in TweetDeck however.
Twitter.com may seem like a step down for many ‘power users,’ but it remains hugely important for Twitter since it is the site that most users access the service from, and therefore changes and tweaks can be influential.

According to a study by eMarketer, India has seen a record growth of 37% in social networking during 2013. India is expected to have more than 80 million Facebook and Twitter users by the end of the year.

A report published by eMarketer, provides insights and trends in digital marketing, media and commerce stated, "Indians are increasingly logging into Facebook and Twitter accounts, with the country recording the highest social networking growth of 37.4 per cent in 2013."

"With the second largest Facebook user-base outside the US, India is expected to have the largest Facebook population in the world by 2016," says the study, findings of which were released on Friday at a conference in Bangalore on 'Social Media Marketing in Emerging Markets'.

A recent survey by IMAI has found that 78 million netizens across the country were active users of Facebook in early 2013, registering a 50% growth over the same period in 2012, followed by 33 million users on Twitter and 20 million users on LinkedIn. Though psychologists and medical experts have been highlighting the increasing addiction to social media among youngsters, Nishant Rao, country manager (India), LinkedIn, feels social media can help too. "Older generation may feel it's bad, but a lot of meaningful interaction is taking place over social media. People now don't want to work for money. They are finding a purpose for working, and networking helps them to find the right kind of job," said Rao.

Over the next few days, Facebook will stop allowing messaging in its main iPhone and Android apps, and force all their users around the world to download its standalone Messenger app. Facebook first started requiring users in Europe to use Messenger back in April, but after seeing “positive results” in terms of engagement, its rolling out the plan to the everyone. Facebook tells me people on Messenger reply about 20% faster, and not supporting multiple version of mobile chat will help it make both its main apps and Messenger better.

Mobile web, iPad, feature phone, Windows Phone, Paper, and desktop users can still message in their main Facebook apps or sites like before, and will be spared from this forced migration for now.

In what could be viewed as an attempt to avoid too much press attention Facebook declined to publish a blog post about the change. Instead, it’s notifying users directly, and it contacted me with this official statement:

“In the next few days, we’re continuing to notify more people that if they want to send and receive Facebook messages, they’ll need to download the Messenger app. As we’ve said, our goal is to focus development efforts on making Messenger the best mobile messaging experience possible and avoid the confusion of having separate Facebook mobile messaging experiences. Messenger is used by more than 200 million people every month, and we’ll keep working to make it an even more engaging way to connect with people.”

Some people might simply not want to worry about managing two different Facebook apps. Others might have enjoyed the Chat Heads interface that allowed message multi-tasking, so they could chat over the top of what they were doing.

But Facebook counters that people send more photos, group messages, videos, stickers, and audio clips while using Messenger. That’s supposedly means they’re having a better experience. With 200 million users on Messenger sending 12 billion messages a day, Facebook wants to unify its efforts around the app and skip out on maintaining code for a parallel version inside its main apps.

Facebook has added a “Save” button to the news feed that lets users bookmark posts, photos, and other content for viewing later. The "Save" feature will be rolled out during the next few days for web users, as well as iOS and Android platforms.

The 'Save' button in the news feed creates a section of bookmarked sites on your profile that will help users to find specific content when they have more time. Facebook users can keep the saved items private or even share them with friends on social networking sites. The feature will entice users to spend even more time on the site.

"Every day, people find all sorts of interesting items on Facebook that they don't have time to explore right away," said Daniel Giambalvo, software engineer at Facebook, in a blog post. "Now you can save items you find on Facebook to check out later when you have more time. You can save items like links, places, movies, TV and music."

Facebook acquired Spool, a read-it-later app almost two years back that could cache articles but also videos and other content to your phone so you could read it later when you had time, and also offered offline support. The social networking site started testing a Save button on mobile in July 2012, but it never got rolled out.